Thursday, 9 July 2015

I was taught about balanced diet in my high school days more than
three decades ago and at that time I was not able to comprehend neither its
importance nor its requirement. As children in our time we used to eat whatever
was available at home. There were no sophisticated eateries outside and no fast
food were available except perhaps, chats and golgoppas from road side vendors. We were often cautioned by our
elders not to indulge in roadside dishes as they were unclean and liable to
cause stomach problems. But never were we conscious about gaining weight and
let alone losing weight by using balanced diet. Our life style then was much
simpler and our daily doses of food intake consisted of proteins,
carbohydrates, minerals, fats and what not. I really did not understand at that
time the use of eating weighted quantity of rice, dal, vegetables, fruits and
all that terming it as “balanced diet”.

As time elapsed and Indian economy opened up in the early 1990s
the Indian market was invaded by the MNCs and drastically changed the way Indians
ate. Fat rich fast food outlets mushroomed and mouth licking stuff like pizzas,
burgers, pastas, grilled chicken sandwitches etc were made available in plenty.
These sophisticated eateries served food having very little nutritional value.
No wonder people indulging in these modern fashion foods gained weight and lost
strength of body and mind due to malnutrition like condition. Now to combat the
weight gain modern health clubs (Our age old body building akhadas, renamed) sprung up. MNCs made money
by putting fat on our bodies and the Health Clubs started making money by putting
us on rigorous physical exercises to burn the fat. What an irony !!

But the comfort crazy population detests health clubs. All they
need is a short cut for losing weight. This is where the dieticians step in
with their business ideas. They show beautiful dreams of weight loss by a couple of kilos (or even
more) every week. And the gullible indolent people give in and accept their
crash diet plans. Now these plans show very good results initially but what we often
fail to realize are the negative impacts of these plans.Crash
Diet Slows down metabolism and makes one very week and sleepy. You feel food
craving all the time and hardly gather energy for any hard physical work. The
worst thing is there is no guarantee that the lost weight will not come back
again.

I have been a foodie since my birth and I would never like to
accept any crash diet plan to lose my weight. I feel if I do that I will
probably not be able to sustain at all. Overweight that I am, I would prefer a
balanced diet plan in addition to a regular mild work out. The advantages of a
balanced diet plan is that it helps to control and lose weight moderately, keeps you fit by providing
proper nutrition and improves your digestive system and metabolism. A good
balanced diet plan aims at reducing calories without letting your body to be
deprived of nutrition and should include the following.

some milk and dairy foods (choosing
lower-fat varieties when possible)

some meat, fish, eggs, beans and other
non-dairy sources of protein

just a small amount of food high in fat and sugar.

It is commendable that Dabur is campaigning
for use of Honey, the natural sweetener. Honey is definitely a good substitute
for the calories rich Sugar. And the Honey Diet is a good form of balanced diet
which every overweight individual should adopt. For more details on Honey Diet
please click the link below.

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

She was 14 and hardly 20 kg in weight. Her
frame had nothing except bones only. But she was very cheerful and kept herself
engaged in activities she liked. She kept her spirits high and heightened ours
as well. Yes, I am talking of my daughter who was suffering from Acute
Lymphoblastic Leukemia (a type of blood cancer) and was under a chemotherapy
regime at CMC, Vellore. The treatment of the dreaded disease being more painful
than the disease itself, my little daughter showed indomitable courage to
combat it. We had to rent a house to stay in Vellore for about a year for her
treatment. It is during this period she learnt to make tea and cook her
favourite snacks. She would prepare the eatables and sell them to us for a
price and enjoyed the business. Every week some drug or other was administered
to her and that kept her dull and dejected for three to four days. She was
unable to move because of the extreme weakness. She was unable to eat as she
was under constant influence of nausea because of the side effects of the
poisonous drugs. For the two days of the week when she felt relatively better she
was very active and wanted to eat tasty things. My wife tried to prepare things
of her choice but her almost dead taste buds could not relish them. In order to
make her busy and forget the painful treatment my wife asked her to help her in
preparing something she liked. Thus, in spite of her weakness my daughter
accepted her mother’s challenge and enjoyed cooking with her. Prior to this she
had never been to the kitchen even to warm a glass of water.

One evening when I returned from the market
doing some grocery shopping she came to me with a tray containing a cup of tea
and some pakodas. The tray was trembling as she did not have the strength to
hold it tightly. I took the tray from her hand began reprimanding her for her
dare devil act. But she was so much overjoyed with her achievement that she
ignored my grumble and told me with a smile writ large on her face, “Papa I
have prepared everything that you see in this tray. And I have come to sell
these to you.” I could hardly believe my eyes. My suffering daughter has
prepared all these for me!! My wife confirmed, “Yes, She has done everything
with a little bit of guidance from me.” Tears welled up in my eyes and I
embraced my little princess. But she shouted in her feeble voice,”No, No that
will not do. You will have to pay me.” “How much, my darling?” I asked. “One
hundred and fifty Rupees” averred my little princess, “One hundred for the
Pakodas and fifty for the tea.” I gave her two hundred rupee notes which she
gladly accepted but regretted for not having ₹50/- to return to me. I told her
to keep that as an advance for another cup of tea on the next day.

Needless to say my daughter learnt the art of
cooking in the most trying circumstances and that pastime helped her to overcome
the ordeals of the painful chemotherapy. That also gave us the mental strength
to deal with the situation. And today, seven years ahead of that incident my
little princess has become a good cook and prepares very delicious fast food. Not
only that her never say die attitude towards life has made our entire family
quite optimistic.

PS: This post is written
specifically for Kellogg’s Chocos ke saath
‘Khuljaye Bachpan’contest. For more
details on this campaign please click the link below.

I vividly remember how I was introduced
to cricket while I was a middle school student. My father used to listen to the
running commentary of various sports events. Although he was not a sportsman at
any stage of his life he was very fond of following sports events, reading
sports magazines and keeping himself update with latest sports news. Football,
Hockey and Cricket used to be his favorites.

I was never a sports lover and hardly went to play outdoor
games except during the games period in the school when all students were
forced to go to the field to play some game like football, Volleyball,cricket
etc. Thus I had some vague ideas of how cricket was played but I had never
developed any liking for the game. But my father used to listen to the running
commentary of cricket matches with awesome regularity. One Sunday afternoon
when he was relaxing on his bed with the only transistor that we had, glued to
his ear I ran to him and asked for the radio to listen to my favorite programme
of film songs. He asked me to get a piece of paper and pencil and sit down with
him. I thought probably he would give me some mathematical problems to solve
and protested, “No I will not study now. Please give me the radio. You are
listening for the last 4 hours. Let me listen for half an hour.” He laughed
affectionately and said, “No, No I am not asking you to study. I will teach you
the game of cricket and how to keep the scores.” I reluctantly sat near him.
The test series between India and England was going on. My father wrote down
the names of the Indian batsmen: Gavaskar, Gaekwad, Amarnath, Viswanath, Brijeash
Patel, Kirmani, Bedi, Chandrasekhar……. etc. Then he told me that Gavaskar and
Viswanath were batting at that time and India had scored something like 102 for
two wickets. He then listened carefully when a loud noise emanated from the
radio and added a +4 to Gavaskar’s score. After some time there was another
noise and he wrote “out” against the name of Viswanath. Somehow I forgot about
my film songs programme and sat with my father listening to the commentary.
This was how I was initiated to cricket commentary and from that day onwards I always
tried to listen to the same. Within a very short span of time I got addicted to
it and started missing my studies/tuition, bunking my classes to listen to the
cricket commentary and keeping scores and statistics. There were a couple of my
class mates who were equally addicted and we three became fast friends. One of
them had a small pocket transistor which he used to bring to the school and we
were caught on several occasions by teachers listening to the radio with very
low volume. On one or two occasions we were driven out of the class and our
parents informed about the “offence” but the cricket fever never went down.

As
I grew up and as technology advanced I graduated from transistor radio to
Television. After joining my job I used to take a leave to watch India’s World
cup matches in 1987.And today with the advent of the smart phone I am always in
touch with the latest scores without missing my important assignments and all
other little things that matter in my life. Over all these years since I was
initiated by my father my addiction for cricket has not diminished at all. I am
really happy that UC Browser’s UC Cricket will be a very useful tool for me and
ardent cricket fans like me.

I have already downloaded UC Browser
on my laptop and my phone. If you are interested then follow the links below: